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How Sunderland and Nissan have become such symbols of Brexit is such a heart-wrenching history involving my hometown and on a personal note my family, I don't even know where to begin.
As a child I grew up largely in the shadow of the shipyards and Monkwearmouth pit. It was a childhood blighted by pitch battles during the strike, poverty, desolation and Thatcher. The mine went first and then shops and cafes, sea front restaurants, the fair went too...
Then the shipyard went. By that time almost every man I knew was out of work. People were scrapping around for everything. The Miner's Hall was no longer there for food parcels. We could take our milk home from school if it would help. It did. Then it was taken my the Tories too.
The eeriest part was the sudden quiet. The sound of the shipyards were a lullaby and suddenly the river was silent. The sound of the union movement was gone too The strike was over. We lost and we knew it. We were punished.
The word that stands out from my childhood - and me and my lifelong best friend were discussing this just last week - is unemployment. I remember grey days. I remember debt collectors in the street and losing our home. And then another home. I moved 11 times in total as a child.
Then Nissan came and things starting picking up for some. In my family men work for them and associated factories. Some have done v well - senior managers and accountants - often visiting Japan and working alongside their contemporaries. They worked hard.
But there was no unionism. The voices which once filled our home which gave us hope were gone. New Labour did not fly the red flag. And in their place stepped the far right. National Front and the BNP in the market square. I remember my Mam squaring up to them and being spat at.
In my first local elections as a cub reporter on the Sunderland Echo, the BNP polled 11%. They poured their poison and for those families who had never recovered from the 80s it worked. And then austerity just perpetuated it all. Blame others, blame immigrants, for your suffering
The BNP and then other far-right groups knocked doors other politicians did not. They spoke in pubs you would cross the road to avoid. They recruited teenagers walking the streets. They were talking while mainstream media and politicians ignored the city and the poverty.
Sunderland was once a wealthy town. It had a huge funfair, money pouring in from all over the world, one of the first Indian restaurants in the country in the 1930s. Over 40 years it has been decimated. This will be the final nail. More will leave, like I left. We feel we have to
Brexit was an ill thought through protest and a result of far right brain washing for others. Watching Billy Charlton cheering - a fascist instigator - being broadcast across the world from Sunderland on front pages day after Brexit was heartbreaking. https://www.chroniclelive.co.uk/news/north-east-news/racist-bully-billy-charlton-shouts-
Those today saying 'Sunderland voted for it' and 'They deserve it' have no of what it was like to grow up and be in that place. Sunderland voting for Brexit is the fault of Thatcher, Cameron and austerity, the far right and and the 'right on' liberals who ignored and still ignore
Who is to blame for Sunderland voting Brexit? The Tory and Libs Dems who backed austerity following years of political, economic and social neglect. Blame yourself for not doing more. Because currently you are blaming frustrated victims, not the perpetrators. <Ends>
Post script: A couple of people have asked what changed. Well my single parent Mam, worked massively hard and got a steady job as a special needs teacher and was so brilliant at it became HofD. The other was, age 11, we finally got secure social housing.
The sell off of social housing as meant that the pathway we had (and it took several years for us to get somewhere) is now closed to many others.
